This is a blog for entries on politics, economics, current affairs, religion, history, philosophy and travel. I mostly muse on events concerning India.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

The State of regional parties

While the principal opposition party, the BJP is moving from one controversy to the other, its time to look at the regional parties. Most of them apart from few ones in the Hindi belt are in a state of crisis. The latest crisis ridden party is the Shiv sena. The old bane of Indian politics, "family fiefdom" being the reason. I believe most people in this country except for the Hindu right in Maharashtra will be happy with the complete disintegration of the Sena. Indeed the Shivsena's time is over and it will be a shame if it were to rebuild and put scumbags like Uddav and Raj Thackray in charge of India's most important state. Down south three prominent regional parties the DMK, TDP and JD(S) are declining. While the instant death of Deve Gowda's party will be a very welcome affair, the same cannot be said about the other two. Deve Gowda is hell bent on showing the door for Siddaramaiah and prop up his son. The congress should grab this opportunity and bring Siddaramaiah into its fold. The DMK ,although it has a reasonable chance to come back to power next year, is already a spent force. I don't think they will go anywhere without the support of the allies. The reason again is its poor leadership. When you have an old man and his politically novice son as party leaders, the party will indeed have very little credibility. This is a shame for the DMK. Imagine Vaiko succeeding Karunanidhi as the leader of the DMK. What a force it would have been? The decline of the DMK has propped up many smaller parties like the PMK, MDMK and the other caste parties which are not good for Tamil Nadu at all. Not to mention the new party to be floated by Vijayakanth. Unless the people of Tamilnadu thrash his party to pieces, it will be a shameful recursor of cinema politics in TN. The TDP again is a party in decline. Although Rajasekhar Reddy is very eager to provide an useless government, which will ultimately help the TDP, it is not doing good on its own. The rise of TRS and the new naxal friendly party floated by Vijayashanthi are ominous signs and must be dealt with seriously for the nation's good. In the east, Asom Gana Parished is in turmoil too. However I cannot care less about the AGP and it will be a terrible tragedy for the Assamese, if the BJP doesn't take AGP's place as the principal opposition to the Congress in the near future.